Chucai had not moved, and the stormy expression on his face was enough to quell the shout rising in ?gedei’s throat. The wine fought him too, muddling his vision and making it seem as if dark shadows swam behind his advisor. Shadows that could contain…
“I will speak with him,” Chucai said. Before ?gedei could argue, Chucai offered a perfunctory bow and went after the emissary, leaving the Khagan to brood on his throne.
?gedei leaned back on silk sheets and breathed the aromatic air infusing his private chambers deep into his lungs. Jasmine and magnolia, with a hint of cedar. It wasn’t the same as the rarified scent of the open steppes, but it reminded him of them nonetheless. In this room, away from the bowing and scraping sycophants and the watchful eyes of his guard, he could forget about the affairs of the empire for a while. His head throbbed faintly, a pressure against the crown of his skull—a lingering reminder of the wine. Dinner with Governor Mahmud Yalavach was a few hours away, and he hoped the headache would be gone by then.
The bed shifted around him, the light presence of his wives as they undid his robe and removed his fur-lined shoes. Hands ran over his muscular chest, and without opening his eyes, he caught them. He heard a quick gasp, and he knew whom he held. Jachin, the tallest. He had chosen her for her eyes, the brightest green color he had ever seen.
One of his wives put her mouth next to his ear, and he felt her breath. “So tense,” she whispered. He released his grip on the pair of fluttering hands and groped for the woman next to him. His hand brushed against her head, touching her thick braids and the thin ribbons she had woven into the strands.
“Toregene,” ?gedei murmured, rolling toward her.
She clucked her tongue, and the sound echoed in his ear. He instinctively moved away from her, and her hands slid under his body, pushing him farther. He rolled onto his stomach, still trying to reach back and grab her. She evaded his clumsy grope and tapped him lightly on the bare shoulder. “Lie still,” she admonished. “Let us see if we can’t work these knots out of your back.”
?gedei grunted and relented, letting his hands fall onto the bed. “If I had my way,” he said, “I’d stay like this all evening, in bed, surrounded by my beautiful wives. We’d make love and then eat fried dumplings, then clean off in a cold bath and take a midnight ride. Out, over the steppes.”
“As if you’d ever be able to keep up with me,” Toregene laughed.
?gedei opened his eyes and tried to look over his shoulder. “In lovemaking or riding?”
“Both.”
?gedei smiled. “Would you not leave me my pride, woman?”
Toregene snorted. “You would get it back in a morning at court. All those officials crawling on the floor, calling you High Grand Exalted Master of the World. Begging you to notice them.”
“It is our job to remind you of more important things,” Jachin said as she joined Toregene. She pressed her elbow down hard into ?gedei’s shoulder, and he let out a grunt of pleasure. “Tense as a bowstring. What is it that worries you?”
The dust on his shoulders, ?gedei thought. The young emissary from his brother Chagatai. The warrior had ridden countless days across the steppes to reach Karakorum. He had slept outside, nothing but the endless bowl of the heavens over his head. There had been a horse beneath him, and the wind had flowed through him. All he had known was the grass that lay behind him and all he saw was horizon before him.
“Do you know how long it has been since I’ve been on a horse?” he said. “How long it has been since I’ve ridden freely across the grasses?”
Neither woman answered. Nor will they, he thought bitterly. They know as well as I. “Some nights I dream of escaping this cave,” he confessed. “I’m sitting in that room, watching an endless parade of bureaucrats and officials. They flow in like a spring river, and every time I blink, there are more of them. A flood that will overwhelm me.
“And in this dream, I escape. I leap from a balcony, and there is a strong pony waiting for me. No one can stop me. I ride out of the gates, and I keep riding forever, until I die in the saddle. But the pony doesn’t stop. He keeps going, and my body rots away. My bones are scattered across the empire, and the pony doesn’t stop until he reaches the place where the sky bends down and touches the ground. All that is left of me then is my hands, my fingers wound in his mane.”
Toregene worked her way down, and ?gedei felt his muscles loosen. He was tight, but it wasn’t that half-remembered tightness, that lower-back tension that came from being in the saddle overlong. “Tonight,” he sighed, “I have to go to dinner and eat over-spiced foreign food with golden chopsticks. I have to pretend to be interested in talking to overstuffed diplomats. That’s all I am now. A man who sits on benches and chairs, who eats and talks. That is all I do.”
“Somebody has to be Khagan,” said Toregene. “You’ve done a better job of ruling the empire than even your father.”